


All I Need

by Billywick



Category: Dota 2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 10:19:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3525560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Billywick/pseuds/Billywick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It just wouldn't stop. No matter how hard he concentrated all of his magnificent mind on the damn limb, it just wouldn't stop.</p><p>-a short drabble for my personal headcanon regarding that trembling glitch in Invoker's loadout -</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Need

**Author's Note:**

> title is always just what i was listening to at the time
> 
> in this case, All I Need by AWOLNATION

It just wouldn't stop. No matter how hard he concentrated all of his magnificent mind on the damn limb, it just wouldn't stop.

A rare, frustrated sigh escaped his lips. It wasn't often something didn't go his way, and even more so where it concerned his very person. His body, disobedient? Kael could not recall any incident where he had lost control of himself this way.  
Still, his hand trembled. The pen had become an object of hatred, without ever having done a thing to deserve it. Kael's fingers closed around it and dropped it seconds later. He cursed the wretched, thin shaft for existing and defying his will. But much more so, he cursed his hand, his wrist, his fingers. The whole impossibly humiliating ordeal of suffering through one of his...attacks.

Of course Kael would never admit to such a thing. Or at least, he would never admit it bothered him. It had begun so long ago and back then, over five hundred years ago (for those to whom time meant anything). At first, it was a mild twitch in his thumb. Something that occasionally interrupted the beautiful art of his handwriting by quill now and then. But nothing as severe as the tremor that ran along his arm, let his slim, long fingers tremble in midair as they struggled to perform a simple task as holding a pen or quill.

Five hundred years ago, Kael had stopped using his hands for such duties. Magic obeyed his very thoughts, ran through his veins as familiar as blood. And infinitely more adaptable than an aging, albeit slowly, body.   
It was the magic itself that brought the tremor. Kael had, of course, looked to rectify this inconceivable flaw in his perfect being, and that had been then only conclusion. Channeling the arcane, commanding spells, weaving them by hand rather than mind and voice alone, those were the cause and the ever-present problem. The Invoker could learn all the spells in the world, but he'd never be rid of this stifling and humiliating flaw. Trembling hands. He wondered if those who aged by nature just took on such flaws with no resistance. Probably so. Very few beings could deign to be aware of their timelessness such as he was. Perhaps an elemental incarnation, or a deity themselves. But not a trembling mortal.  
Only mortals aged, became decrepid and died a slow death, the failure of their most basic form in the face of their will to live. A fatal flaw, aging.   
And not one he, the Invoker, grandest of mages to ever stride across the world, shared. He did not age. But magic weathered his body and would not fix it.

Kael knew all this. And yet, he still couldn't help the feeling welling up in him at the sight of his disobedient wrist and hand. Displeasure. Disappointment. Humiliation. And that last one, the worst. Because nothing in the world had the right to make him, the keeper of all knowledge, the master of all spells, feel humiliated.   
And yet there it was. The trembling, rotten limb. A furious anger came over him and Kael fought the instinct to do himself harm, to remove what he did not use and served him no purpose.  
No, never. His temper cooled as quickly as it had flared up. Never would he harm his own form, never would he part from an actual piece of himself. Kael never surrendered to pure impulse, but right now, he wished. He wished like any mortal man for his will to be done, for this bothersome flaw to disappear.

It wasn't a cosmic entity that answered the wish, nor was it a miracle cure.

It was, as it so often had been in the recent past, a warm hand, a soft grip that enfolded his fingers. An infinite source of calm silence that quelled any movement in his limb whatsoever.  
Nortrom didn't have to say anything. Of course not. The silence they shared often contained much more than the most eloquent of conversations. Poets couldn't encapsulate the atmosphere as it shifted between them. Tension, from Kael. There was little worse than having a witness in one's most vulnerable of moments. Although many would consider it a rather shallow vulnerability, to Kael, it was the greatest.

Nortrom knew. He'd known, seen it for years. No comment, no question had come from the Silencer. Never had he imposed himself on Kael or seen fit to patronise the immortal elf that had more or less accepted that their joined company was a rather lengthy fixture in time. And Kael had always known that Nortrom did this, out of pure respect to him. That landed the Silencer, an infinitely younger elf in comparison to Kael, a lift in appreciation. But that was kind of their story altogether, if told from someone who knew what went on in those silences, someone who could decode the cipher of their light touches.

Kael found Nortrom interesting, almost fascinating. Nortrom had worked hard for that, truly. Not necessarily aware of it, of course, but his life's work, an accumulation of violence and the deaths and punishment of many a dark mage had formed a warrior out of the promising young prodigy hailing from Aeol Drias. Kael remembered the order. Desperate for their dream, to breed the ultimate battlemage, they frequently taught magic by using what was known about Kael himself. Sometimes he had considered them flattery, sometimes annoying.

But Nortrom was no mage and he was no failure. He was a brutal prodigy, the genius of his seemingly calm and stoic mind overcoming the obstable of having no spells bend to his will.  
Of course, it helped that Nortrom was, for an elf, an exotic kind of beauty. Nothing seemed to have been designed right in his pedigree. From the rich tone of his skin and its proclivity to accept deep lines far too young in life to the crooked nose and ears far too short to be considered adequately elven. Nortrom was a concoction of things that should not be capable of making a name for itself.  
And yet Nortrom with all of his flaws, was perfect. Even his mortality suited him well. The scars, witness and reminders that criss-crossed his body, those were all a part of the appealing, puzzling pleasantry that was Kael's lover.  
Yes, lover. Of course the Invoker had tried whatever he liked in his long life, sex included. But never had he bothered to allow someone to try and carve themselves a place at his side in the ravages of time.  
Nortrom hadn't asked. Nortrom had simply done so.

That was just the way it worked. No matter what Kael did to remain as he always would be, proud, untouchable, Nortrom just got beside him, endured whatever came, ignored the apparent, insufferable arrogance with an indulgent little hidden smile and then seeped in through the cracks, the tiny chinks in Kael's defenses. The maddening, mortal fool.

"Let me."

It was so rare for Nortrom to speak during moments as these, Kael actually lavished him a look. But the Silencer wasn't letting the azure of his eyes meet Kael's face, since he was slightly stooped, lips resting against Kael's fingers in a soft breath of a kiss.  
It was absurd, the notion that a kiss would cull the incessant trembling, and yet, the gesture...it was ridiculously caring. Nortrom was such a fool, one who wore his heart on his sleeve, ready to be torn off and abused. Or at least, let it linger in Kael's grasp.  
Yet he could not bring himself to it. Kael had allowed Nortrom to linger for far too long. The Silencer was important to him now. An elf, hundreds of years his junior, who presumed that with enough care, he could make a difference to Kael's life.  
The Invoker's expression softened as Nortrom repeated the gesture with the other hand. Slowly, the tension ebbed from his wrists. It didn't matter if his hands trembled now. How could he be humiliated when Nortrom worshipped him so even in a moment of vulnerable weakness?

There was no word of thanks spoken, no kiss or affection exchanged, but when Nortrom looked up, Kael's lips had softened their small, tight line of tension and although his eyes never betrayed emotion, they appraised him. Thanked him though the words would never cross those ancient elven lips.

Kael loved nothing more than himself in all the world. But Nortrom was a close second.


End file.
